Poll: Obama’s Approval Rating Plummets To Lowest Level Since 2011

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According to a new CNN/ORC poll, President Barack Obama’s approval rating has plummeted a net 8 percent over the past month, and now stands at its lowest level since September 2011.

The poll finds that 54 percent of Americans now disapprove of the president’s job performance, while just 45 percent approve — 1 percent have no opinion.

According to the poll, 50 percent of Americans say that Obama is not honest and trustworthy, while 49 percent say that he is; this is the first time in Obama’s presidency that CNN has found a majority distrusting the president. This decline may well have been driven by the recent revelations about the government’s surveillance of U.S. citizens, of which respondents disapprove by a 61 to 35 percent margin.

“It is clear that revelations about NSA surveillance programs have damaged Obama’s standing with the public, although older controversies like the IRS matter may have begun to take their toll as well,” CNN polling director Keating Holland said.

Despite the public’s general disapproval of government surveillance, however, respondents were more conflicted about the administration’s specific policies. The poll finds that Americans approve of the government collecting and analyzing phone records by a 51 to 48 percent margin, and approve of the government collecting and analyzing internet records by a 66 to 33 percent margin. While 43 percent say that the Obama administration has gone too far in restricting people’s civil liberties in order to fight terrorism, 38 percent say it has been about right, and 17 percent say it has not gone far enough.

The poll, which sampled 1,014 adults from June 11 to 13 and has a +/- 3 percent margin of error, is an outlier among other surveys of the president’s approval rating. According to the Real Clear Politics poll average, Obama’s approval sits at 46.4 percent, with 48.3 percent disapproving.

More brilliant judgment from an enlightened electorate. Next week it will change again, undoubtedly triggered by something really important like whether his flag pin was on straight last time they saw him on TV.

As well as to bring up as always his use of teleprompters that the rightwing crazies always use in their criticism, conveniently ignoring the fact that these are widely used also by many of the rightwing lunatics whom they see as quasi-deities.

The Tea Party and the GOP propaganda machine financed by the Koch brothers and special interests managed to distort the incredible record of accomplishments made by President Obama by projecting a sense of chaos that contrasts with the reality that surrounds us. Distortion, hyperbole, and outright lies transformed Benghazi into an unprecedented terrorist attack, an IRS investigation by an office manager who happens to be a conservative Republican into a witch hunt directed by the Obama administration, and surveillance conducted by our intelligence agencies to minimize the probability of more terrorist attacks into unprecedented attempts to destroy our constitutional rights. Incredibly, a naïve an uninformed electorate took the bait once again and ignores the fact that the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil happened when a Republican President was in office and the GOP had full control of Congress. They ignore that our diplomatic missions were attacked 12 times when George W. Bush was in office. They don’t care, or don’t seem to understand that the person that was investigating the Tea Party tax exempt applications was a Republicans and that the investigation was being conducted because those applications included false statements. And they apparently forgot that the legislation that authorizes monitoring of calls and other types of surveillance, the Patriot Act, was signed into law by George W. Bush in 2001, and updated in 2005. Needless to say, they don’t seem to understand why the Patriot Act was written and signed in the first place and believe, incorrectly, that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are monitoring our conversations with our grandchildren.
Most importantly, they seem to have forgotten where we were in January 2009, where we are today, and why.

I agree 100%. Without a doubt, the slight dip in approval, has more to do
with a poorly informed, or if they tune into Fox, a misinformed public.
What were the numbers on Bush? High 20s, to low 30’s. So, people
also forget. There are a good number out there, who feel, and rightly so,
we need to be talking about improving the economy. And not these soap
opera, type scandals. That a lot of people are starting to see, as more of
an inside the beltway, political spat. And a distraction from real issues,
they would like to them working on. Can’t say I disagree there either.
But, people also tend to think the President can just do anything he wants.
It seemed like Bush diid. Right? One fellow here said , he promised to build infrastructure, and the bridges are falling down. So, he says, he lied about
that too! So what’s new?

Another contributing factor is President Obama’s focus on governance and the way he ignores politics. He has allowed the far right to demonize his record and his policies, and both he and the Democratic party is paying a heavy price for it.

I support and appreciate his focus on governance, but sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in, and this applies to more than just approval ratings. The reason so many Americans don’t have a positive opinion of ACA is because the administration allowed its detractors to distort the benefits of that program. The reason investment in infrastructure did not materialize is not because President Obama lied, but because Congress rejected his proposal to invest in an area of critical importance to our future. The same is true for investment in education, for immigration law reform, and for just about every initiative proposed by Barack Obama. He must understand that not all citizens take the time or have the inclination to analyze policy proposals or investigate issues. They listen to the news – if they even bother to do so – and form an opinion based on who speaks the loudest, or who has the most persuasive message.

I reckon it is up to all of us to remind folks of where we were in January 2009 when our economy was on the verge of collapse, when bankruptcies and foreclosures were at record highs, when our financial institutions had to be bailed out to prevent the end of capitalism, when large corporations like GM and Chrysler had to be bailed out to keep a critical sector of our economy from going under, when the value of the dollar was in question, when unemployment was going up and people had lost the ability to hope for a better future, and when we were engaged in two wars we should have never started. That’s just a small sample of what President Obama managed to turn around, a sample of what ought to be our primary focus, and a sample of what is being ignored in favor of ridiculous soap operas that don’t deserve the attention of people capable of logical thinking.

Dominick the problem for President Obama is a weak press corp. Most American people need the news in short sound bites just like Fox News gives them. Unfortunately in-depth explanation is not what most Americans want to hear or can digest. The sound bite needs to be short and hammered home all day every day only than will most people remember what is being said. Sad but for many true.

That’s very true. I often wonder if the reason our so-called liberal press gives a free pass to so many Republican failures is because they are weak or lazy, or because they must support the interest of their sponsors/owners. An example involves the coverage the Tea Party got from the recent – alleged – scandals which, in my opinion, were designed to discredit President Obama’s record, derail his second term agenda, and divert attention from issues of national importance and the fact the GOP has no constructive proposals and how to solve the problems that ought to be our top priorities.

I hasten to add, that President Obama being perceived as fighting for what he believes in, rather than benignly governing, might also contribute to a drop in his approval ratings. Term limits allow lawmakers to support controversial legislation close to their hearts, because they personally have no up-coming election to lose. For example, note how the president has once again pushed for legislation to curtail gun violence and for closing Guantanamo Bay. On the Republican side, Jan Brewer, facing her term limit, was able to fight her legislature and bring the ACA’s Medicaid expansion to Arizona. This is also a good argument for term limits on the time an individual can serve in the House and Senate, where bravery of any kind, even calculated, is in short supply.

We who support his agenda need to talk with friends and neighbors, even Republicans if they are not on the screaming fringe, and point out the positive accomplishments … and the negative actions of the obstructionist opposition. Not rabid rhetoric, just friendly talk. Ask them for the DETAILS of WHY they have that position. Sometimes people see the flaws in an argument in the process of trying to explain it.

The Obamacare exchanges are about to open, and people who would benefit from them need help to navigate them. We who have time to study the new law in detail can volunteer to help others navigate it, just as CPA’s volunteer to help the poor and elderly fill out their tax returns. The very process of signing up for insurance if needed, or helping someone who DOES need it, busts some myths and clarifies others. It will also point out the REAL flaws, where progressives had to compromise to get any new law at all passed, and which only progressives elected to Congress will be willing to correct. That could change many minds for the 2014 elections, but only volunteers can do it; the President himself cannot, without our help.

Have to agree also the Administrations rebuttal of these false claims is weak and very inneffective they sem to think by not attacking these lies it will all go away and people will miraculously know “the truth” His team needs to be far more aggressive

To quote a friend, they may have suckered some of the voters without a “triple digit IQ” *wink* but they didn’t suck me into those stupid “scandals” I wouldn’t know witch one of the 40 they think is most important this week.
I still approve of what the President is doing, or at least what he can do, without being obstructed.

Let’s see, how long would that leave the Middle Class, to shore up their
finances, after being nearly wiped out by the last GOP, slash, and burn
terror through the heartland? I guess the thinking is, to get back at them,
ASAP, and finish them off, before they can fully recover.

Unless you are a millionaire, Catskinner, if you think that being part of the “we” that implements the Republican program will make you part of the “we” that will benefit from that program, you are being used and deceived. Eighty years of cold hard statistics prove that.

“We’ll finally be able to get something done” What a joke!! I challenge you to come up with just one thing in the past 100 years that has been “something done” by the GOP?? Aside from libertarian Eisenhower who ran as a Republican and got the ONLY THING DONE the GOP has accomplished in the past 100 years. Name one other thing!!

Let me give you a few hints of what you might come up with:

1) screwing up the economy so bad in 1928/29 that the stock market crashed??

2) Going even further to screw up the economy in 1929/30 that resulted in driving not only America but the world into the Big Depression??

3) Fighting FDR every bit of the way in trying to get America back from the Big Depression which could have been done in 3-5 years but because of GOP obstlructionism took arguably 13 years – till after WWII before America was fully recovered???

4) Doing everything the party could do to sabatage Social Security and Medicare so that today there would be millions more homeless because they’d have no safety net to fall back on and more people dying younger becaue far less people would be able to afford to see a doctor any time in their lives???

5) How about being the party that has the most dysmal record of Stock Market performance during the years that THEIR GUY is in office?? Like an average stock market return rate of around.4% (yes point 4 percent). While during the time Dems were in office the stock market return rate was close to 10% – meaning quite a differenct to people who invested say 10,000 right after the GOP crashed the market in 29. $10,000 would have grown to a paltry $11,7000 over the 35 years GOP was in office whereast it would have grown to around $307,000 during the 40 years a Dem was in office.

6) Or maybe you consider Bush’s sterling record of having 14 terrorist attacks during his 8 years in office with over 3,050 people killed (including more than 3,000 Americans) as a sterling GOP accomplishment – in contrast to 2 attacks during Obama’s 1st term with 4 people being killed…guess Obama’s record doesn’t match Bush’s from the standpoint of depravity.

Those are just a few Catskinner – let’s see you come up with one thing the GOP has done over the past 100 years in “getting something done”???

The GOP had NOTHING TO DO with getting LBJ out of running for another term – he backed out because he was told he didn’t have the support of enough DEMOCRAT delegates at the convention. Nice try but no cigar!! You’ll have to think of something better than that – kind of tough thinking of something worthwhile being done by a political party that is totally useless!!!

But one guy is very lucky that LBJ didn’t get a second term – Richard Nixon. Had LBJ been elected again, he would have seen to it that Nixon was tried for TREASON!! LBJ knew that Nixon DELIBERATELY SABOTAGED the peace talks with North Vietnam – and was making plans to charge Nixon with treason at the time he decided to drop out of the race for another term.

He told David Brinkley that he didn’t run for a second term because he didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war. And in Robert McNamara’s book, the public found out that LBJ knew the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened. So he lied the US into escalation, and then chickened out. But the GOP opposed him so they can take the credit.

You’re pretty shallow if that’s what you call CREDIT. LBJ wasn’t going to admit to the public that the wouldn’t run again because his own party wouldn’t renominate him. The party backed off from him because the Vietname War became so unpopular with the people – and part of that was Nixon’s Fault for having deliberatly sabotaged the peace talks that may have ended the war before LBJ came up for reelection. Nixon knew the war was very unpopular and that there was no way that LBJ could get reelected if it was still going on at next election time, which is most likely why he purposely sabotaged the peace talks. When you’re a lowlife like Nixon you’re really a lowlife.

We all thought Nixon was terrible when he first left office, but we didn’t find out until years later that LBJ was much worse. No it’s Obama. Obama is probably going to end up being the very worst president ever.

Big deal. Numbers go up. Numbers go down. I seriously think that Obama really isn’t concerned with the day-to-day numbers; that’s like playing checkers, and he’s playing chess. I would really like to see him get out there and start fighting back, but I also think that he’s aware that this is exactly what the GOP wants him to do – get down into the mud with them. The scandals are proving to be more and more ginned up fluffery, and sooner or later the people are going to get burned out on them. The chicken little who cried wolf . . .

The problem the GOP has is that their base is addicted to scandal because they have absolutely nothing else. This is why they keep making ‘symbolic’ votes to overturn ACA or restrict abortion or return to the gold standard or . . . because they have to show their base that they’re doing SOMETHING, even while the rest of the country sees that they’re doing nothing. They have become the Fey folk of politics – always busy yet producing nothing, the crew which never sleeps.

The GOP has zero legislative accomplishments of which to boast when it comes election time other than ‘we opposed everything Obama wanted to do!’. You don’t win elections with that. You can win primaries, but once you get to the general, it becomes clear that you have nothing that could give anyone outside the base a reason to vote for you. But . . . they don’t care.

The math goes like this – if you lose the primary, by definition, you lose the general simply by not being a candidate. Therefore, (as Rmoney tried) you go hard right in order to secure the nomination, then try to bullshit your way back to the center in order to have any possibility of winning the general unless you’re in a blood-red district / state where the median IQ is lower than the median waist size. And even in those blood-red states and districts, that edge is fading.